


Legends and Symbols

by Lokei



Series: Steve Rogers at the Smithsonian [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Museums, Smithsonian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-22
Updated: 2015-02-22
Packaged: 2018-03-14 12:50:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3411251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lokei/pseuds/Lokei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't know how he thought going to an exhibit featuring his dead friends would help, really, but here he is anyway, mute, embarrassed, and wondering.</p><p>Missing scene for CA:TWS, as Steve lingers in the Captain America exhibit at the Smithsonian.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legends and Symbols

The museum is busy, but not as bad as it often gets.  DC is crowded most of the year, an international tourist destination, and the free museums get the brunt of the swarm on days that are too hot and sticky to go without air conditioning, never mind the Scout groups and school groups and overstimulated toddlers and all.  It's a good thing, really, to see that so many people are drawn to what these museums have to offer, but Steve misses the comparative emptiness of some of the museums back in New York, back in the middle days of the war, when everyone who was there was there for the same reason, to get a bit of a break, to surround themselves with beauty and order in a world that didn't really make sense.

Steve's world makes even less sense now, and he feels the multi-layered irony of going to an exhibit focused not just on his past, but specifically about *him* in order to try to sort his brain out.If Stark found out, he'd laugh for a hundred years, probably, and then get JARVIS to pull up the latest additions to his "Stark's Idiocy Highlights reel" to make up for laughing. Stark knows about demons just as well as Steve does, if not better.But Tony's not here--none of the Avengers are around at all, save Natasha, and he's pretty unhappy with the way she and Fury are playing monkey in the middle with him and what he needs to know. He doesn't know how he thought going to an exhibit featuring his dead friends would help, really, but here he is anyway, mute, embarrassed, and wondering.The exhibit seems good, not that he's spent a lot of time thinking about these things.  He'd asked the exhibition team to make sure that all the Commandos got credited, that the SSR support team did too, and they did.  It's a bit of a kick in the ribs to see pieces of their uniforms on display, and since the exhibit was co-hosted by the Air & Space museum, they'd even included things like the busted signal device Stark--Howard, that is--had given him to call for a pick up on that first crazy self-assigned rescue mission.Just as well it had busted, no way the plane could have taken off again with as many folks as had needed rescuing.  He wonders what Howard would think of Project Insight, of helicarriers and the sheer immensity of the scale of potential destruction that the 21st century takes for granted.  Wonders if Tony knows what use his repulsors are being put to. 

 

Steve stares at one of the motorbikes used by the Commandos that he'd managed not to crash, incinerate, or riddle with bullet holes, and thinks about personal destruction, the kind you see from a bike or a rifle's end, as opposed to the kind you manage by computer and remote.  Maybe Fury and the 'whizzes' behind Project Insight take that scale for granted because it is just too big, that all those lives and all those 'potential threats' are nothing more than symbols, lines of code, blips. 

 

The interpretive panel on the wall behind the uniforms calls him a symbol of American resilience.

 

Steve doesn't want to be a blip.  


Motion at the edge of his vision catches his attention: a kid scrambling under a length of recreated 'barbed' wire, her face determined as she scoots along on her elbows. "Get outta there," an older boy says with a scowl.  "You're too little for that, and a girl.""So?" the girl challenges, not stopping her forward crawl.  "What's that matter?"Steve drops into a crouch and offers her his hand as she wriggles out the other end.  "Not a thing.  You did real well there, don't let anyone tell you differently.  I knew a lady once who could take down a guy twice her size when he was being mean.  She was my hero."The little girl's eyes are wide as headlights, beaming with recognition, and Steve suppresses a sigh.  He really hadn't meant to engage while he was here.  He isn't here for recognition--well, not outside recognition.  It'd help if there was something here that would help him recognize himself.  

 

The older boy is still grumbling, which brings Steve out of his spiraling thoughts. 

 

"You know, the real heroes are the ones that stop the bullies, not the ones who are bullies themselves.  You still get to decide which one of those you want to be."  

 

The kid stares at him, so Steve just nods at him and moves on.  The kid will listen, or he won't.  He'll stop to think, or he won't.  The hardest thing Steve learned since losing Bucky was when to call a stop, on his own hook.  Without Bucky at his back, or in his face, Steve had to be his own referee.  

 

He wasn't good at it. In fact, one could say his current track record was even worse on the scale of recklessness and stupidity than usual.   That fight on the carrier--Bucky would have kicked his ass for giving up his shield and helmet just to prove a point to a two-bit criminal with a smug mouth.

 

One person would still call him on it, now that he thinks about it.  The one person in this exhibition video who talks about Steve like a person, instead of like a storybook legend.  

 

It's time to go see Peggy.


End file.
